New SCHS swim team coach Jean Paul LaVertu is excited to get his team started.

“I’ve been very impressed with the team’s technique and skill level,” he said. “Obviously they’ve been very well coached in the years past. I’m still learning about them and trying to find out who to use where and when. But I’m having fun figuring everything out.”

A young SCHS boys’ cross-country team struggled Saturday to an 11th-place finish at a tough Franklin-Simpson Wildcat Wilderness Invitational in Franklin.

Stacey Eden led Shelby County with a seventh-place finish in 17 minutes, 24 seconds, but he was more than a minute behind winner Ryan Eaton of Greenwood. Eaton is the defending state champion and one of Eden’s top targets at this year’s State Meet. Eden was the only upperclassman in the Rockets’ top five.

A dominating performance against Southern on Friday put the Rockets in a position they haven’t seen in a long time.

After Shelby (7-2, 2-1 in District 4) hammered the Trojans (1-8, 0-3), 55-0, and word came out of Male’s rout of Fern Creek, the Rockets learned they would host a playoff game for the first time since 1995.

They will play host to Seneca on Nov. 6, and earning that game was the motivation kept the Rockets prepared for the hapless Trojans.

The SCHS volleyball team just couldn’t get over that North Oldham hump.

The Lady Rockets (22-6) scratched, clawed and battled their way through a very close match with the North (22-9), the 8th Region’s No. 1 team, but the upset was just a couple of points away Wednesday night at the SCHS gym.

Shelby fell to the Lady Mustangs, 2-0 (25-23, 25-19), but played them closer than anyone had since North beat Greenwood, 2-1, on Oct. 8.